Category Archives: online publishing

My 2012 Watch List

December 18, 2011 – 11:00 pm

TweetWhen it comes to cracking the digital media code, 2011 involved more testing than learning. Media companies seem to be locked in a feverish search mode. Their sense of urgency is reinforced by the continuous depletion of worldwide fundamentals: digital advertising’s encephalogram remains flat (at best); and when audiences grow, revenues do not necessarily correlate. [...]

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The Best of Curation

December 11, 2011 – 10:43 pm

TweetI love talking about the things I enjoy using. The emerging ecosystem in which a bunch of smart people curate long form journalism is definitely one of those things. The companies are called Instapaper, Longreads, Longform. I love the material they find for me and I’m in the debt of developers who wrote neat applications [...]

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Apple’s Newsstand: Wait for 2.0

October 24, 2011 – 3:30 am

TweetCan Apple crack the digital news market the way it did with music? The comparison might not be relevant. Here is why: – Today, in the new business, imperfect as it is, the transition from print to digital is much more advanced than the music industry’s similar transformation was when, in 2001, Apple launched the [...]

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The Capsule’s Price

September 25, 2011 – 9:12 pm

TweetDo encapsulated digital editions make sense? Is the notion of having a “news container”, similar to a newspaper or magazine, a relic of the past or is it still associated with quality journalism? In an era of instant information, is it worth proposing a self-contained, stop-motion shot of the news cycle? For some, the reflexive [...]

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The (Overly Personal) Litmus Test

September 18, 2011 – 7:44 pm

TweetOver the past three weeks, I’ve been followed. By advertising. Like many, week after week, I land on dozens of sites. Some visits originate from my set of bookmarks, others from the usual click hopping that defines internet serendipity. In numerous instances, I get the same ad in different formats. The advertiser is called Litmus. [...]

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Innovation in turbulent times

August 21, 2011 – 8:31 pm

TweetNews organizations have an innovation problem. Especially print media. As they gingerly wade into digital, their ability to foster innovation becomes more critical than ever. In today’s fast-changing landscape, they should view innovation as their main weapon against direct competitors and emerging players such as tech startups,. Unfortunately, print media appears ill-equipped to innovate. The [...]

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The ePresse Digital Kiosk: First Lessons

July 10, 2011 – 6:29 pm

Tweet[correction added about Relay.com's rate] On June 30th, the French consortium ePresse opened its digital kiosk. Six months of hard work for a very small team (the ePresse consortium is a three persons operation: a CTO, a marketing person, and a manager), and still a long way to go. ePresse brought up eight titles: five [...]

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Losing value in the “Process”

June 19, 2011 – 7:07 pm

TweetDigital media zealots are confused: they mistake news activity for the health of the news business. Unfortunately, the two are not correlated. What they promote as a new kind of journalism carries almost no economic value. As great as they are from a user standpoint, live blogging / tweeting, crowdsourcing and hosting “experts” blogs bring [...]

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Analyzing the metered model

June 5, 2011 – 5:03 pm

TweetThe metered model deserves a closer look. One the dirtiest little secrets of the online media business is the actual number of truly loyal readers — as opposed to fly-bys. No one really wants to know (let alone let anyone else know). Using a broad brush, about half of the audience is composed of casual [...]

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Lessons from the Bin Laden coverage

May 8, 2011 – 6:53 pm

TweetOne after the other, the newscycles of momentous events keep reshaping the digital information landscape. The latest example of such alteration is the Bin Laden story, it just set a new reference point. For traditional media, this raises the pressure yet another notch; they must rethink everything: organizations and processes – as well as business [...]

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